"Old World Landowners" by Nikolai Gogol

I like very much the modest life of those solitary proprietors of remote estates who in Little Russia are usually known as the old world and who, like decrepit, picturesque little houses, are so nicely mottled and so completely the opposite of a new, smooth building whose walls have not yet been washed by rain, whose root is not yet covered with green mold, and whose porch does not yet show its red bricks through missing plaster.

I like very much the modest life of those solitary proprietors of remote estates who in Little Russia are usually known as the old world and who, like decrepit, picturesque little houses, are so nicely mottled and so completely the opposite of a new, smooth building whose walls have not yet been washed by rain, whose root is not yet covered with green mold, and whose porch does not yet show its red bricks through missing plaster.

The life of their modest owners is quiet, so quiet that for a moment you forget yourself and think that the passions, desires, and restlessness produced by the evil spirit who troubles the world do not exist at all, and that you saw them only in a splendid, shining dream.

Be that as it may, even as my britzka drove up to the porch of this little house, my soul would assume a remarkably pleasant and calm state; the horses would trot merrily to the porch, the coachman would most calmly climb down from the box and fill his pipe as if he had come to his own house; the very barking set up by the phlegmatic Rustys, Rovers, and Fidos was pleasant to my ears.

On their faces there was always written such kindness, such cordiality and pure-heartedness, that you would unwittingly renounce all your bold dreams, at least for a short while, and pass imperceptibly into lowly bucolic life.

By it one seemed able to read their whole life, the serene, calm life led by old, native-born, simple-hearted and yet wealthy families, who are always such a contrast to those low Little Russians who push their way up from tar-makers and dealers, fill the courts and government offices like locusts, rip the last kopeck out of their own compatriots, flood Petersburg with pettifoggers, finally make some fortune, and to their last name, which ends in o, solemnly add the letter v.

All these long-past, extraordinary events were replaced by a quiet and solitary life, by those drowsy and at the same time harmonious reveries which you experience sitting on a village balcony overlooking the garden, when a wonderful rain makes a luxuriant splashing on the leaves, pouring down in bubbling streams and casting a drowsy spell over your limbs, and meanwhile a rainbow steals from behind the trees and like a half-ruined arch shines with its seven muted colors in the sky.

He was not one of those old people who make a nuisance of themselves, eternally praising the old days or denouncing the new.

The crackling of this burning straw and its light made the front hall very pleasant on a winter evening, when ardent youths, chilled in the pursuit of some swarthy beauty, came running in clapping their hands.

The floors in almost all the rooms were of clay, but it was beaten down so neatly and kept so clean, as surely no parquet is kept in any rich house where a drowsy gentleman in livery lazily does the sweeping.

The floors in almost all the rooms were of clay, but it was beaten down so neatly and kept so clean, as surely no parquet is kept in any rich house where a drowsy gentleman in livery lazily does the sweeping.

...if I happen now to hear the occasional creaking of a door, it immediately smells of the village to me, of the low little room lit by a candle in an old-fashioned candlestick, of supper already set on the table, of the dark May night gazing at the laid table through the open window from the garden, of the nightingale showering the garden, the house, and the distant river with his trills, of the fright and rustling of the branches...and, God, what a long string of memories comes to me then!

The chairs in the room were wooden, massive, as is usual with old-time things; they all had high, carved backs, natural, with no varnish or paint; they were not even upholstered, and somewhat resembled the chairs on which bishops sit to this day.

Triangular tables in the corners, a rectangular one in front of the sofa, and a mirror in a narrow gilt frame with carved leaves, which flies had covered with black specks, a rug in front of the sofa with birds looking like flowers and flowers looking like birds—these were about all the furnishings in the unpretentious house where my old couple lived.

Triangular tables in the corners, a rectangular one in front of the sofa, and a mirror in a narrow gilt frame with carved leaves, which flies had covered with black specks, a rug in front of the sofa with birds looking like flowers and flowers looking like birds—these were about all the furnishings in the unpretentious house where my old couple lived.

Pulkheria Ivanovna usually reprimanded the guilty girl and gave strict orders that no such thing should happen again.

The steward, together with the village headman, stole unmercifully. They made a custom of entering their master's forests as if they were their own; they built a lot of sleds and sold them at the local fair; besides that, they sold all the big oak trees to the neighboring Cossacks to be cut down for their mills.

For that purpose a droshky was harnessed with enormous leather aprons which, as soon as the coachman snapped the reins and the horses, veterans of the old militia, started from their place, filled the air with strange noises, so that one could suddenly hear a flute, a tambourine, and a drum; every little nail and iron staple set up such a clangor that even out at the mills one could hear the mistress leaving her yard, though it was nearly a mile and a half away.

“Why is it, Nichipor,” she said, addressing her steward, who was right there, “that with you the oaks have grown so sparse? Look out that the hair on your head doesn’t grow sparse, too.”

As soon as day broke (they always rose early) and the doors started their discordant concert, they would be at the table having coffee.

“Or maybe you’d like some custard?”
“That’s good,” Afanasy Ivanovich would answer. After which it would all be brought at once and duly eaten up.

They vied with each other in trying to treat you to everything their farm had produced.

But the most pleasant thing for me was that they were obliging without being cloying.

But the most pleasant thing for me was that they were obliging without being cloying.

This ready cordiality was so meekly expressed on their faces, was so becoming in them, that willy-nilly you would agree to their requests.

It proceeded from the clear, serene simplicity of their kind and artless souls.

This cordiality was a far cry from what you’re treated to by a clerk in a government office who owes his success to you, calls you his benefactor, and cowers at your feet.

The guest, who also very rarely left his estate, frequently offered his surmises with an important look and a mysterious expression on his face, saying that the French had secretly agreed with the English to turn Bonaparte loose on Russia again, or else simply talked of war being imminent, and then Afanasy Ivanovich often said, as if not looking at Pulkheria Ivanovna: “I’m thinking of going to war myself. Why shouldn’t I go to war?”

This was followed by the same kind of report on other decanters, that almost all of them had some healing properties.

It was dense, overgrown, the old tree trunks were covered with rampant hazel bushes and looked like shaggy pigeon legs.

Lofty feelings are generally unknown to them; they live by plunder and kill young sparrows right in their nests.

Pulkheria Ivanovna kept calling her, but the cat stood in front of her, meowing and not daring to come near; it was clear that she had grown quite wild in the meantime. Pulkheria Ivanovna went on ahead of her, still calling the cat, who timorously followed her as far as the fence.

You’ll be unhappy yourself, and your children will be unhappy, and none of your posterity will have God’s blessing in anything.

Her certainty of imminent death was so strong and her state of mind was so set on it that, in fact, a few days later she lay down and could no longer take any food.

The priests were in full vestments, the sun shone, nursing infants wept in their mothers’ arms, larks sang, children in smocks ran and frolicked on the road.

I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion—tender, beautiful as an angel—was struck down by insatiable death.

I followed him inside; everything there seemed as before, but I noticed a strange disorder in it all, some tangible absence of something or other; in short, I sensed in myself those strange feelings that come over us when for the first time we enter the dwelling of a widower whom we had known before inseparable from his lifelong companion.

The absence of the solicitous Pulkheria Ivanovna could be seen in everything: at the table one of the knives was lacking a handle; the dishes were no longer prepared with the same artfulness.

His hand fell on the plate, the plate overturned, fell off and broke, sauce got all over him; he sat insensibly, insensibly holding his spoon, and like a stream, like a ceaselessly flowing fountain, the tears poured down in torrents onto the napkin covering him.

Several times he attempted to pronounce the dead woman's name, but halfway through it his calm and ordinary face became convulsively disfigured, and I was struck to the heart by his childlike weeping.